For the youngest victims of sexual assault, it can take years to confront -- and in some cases, even to remember -- the abuse suffered in their youth.

The state Appellate Court ruled Tuesday that unique emotional damage justifies a state law that gives victims of child sexual abuse until their 35th birthdays to sue their alleged attackers. The decision was the first broad constitutional endorsement of the 1991 law that extended the statute of limitations in child molestation cases.

The law was challenged by a man from the New Haven area whose grandson and granddaughter claim in a lawsuit that he molested them 20 years ago.

The grandfather argued that the law violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by giving plaintiffs who claim they were sexually assaulted as children longer to sue than is afforded other plaintiffs.

Laws generally can withstand a challenge on those grounds if the apparently unequal treatment serves a legitimate state interest. The Appellate Court ruled that Connecticut's law does.

``The state has a legitimate interest both in deterring the sexual abuse of children and in providing a means for the victims of childhood sexual abuse to recall the traumatic events and understand them before seeking redress,'' the court said in a decision written by Chief Justice Antoinette Dupont. The decision, by a three-judge panel, was unanimous.

Before the law was changed in 1991, lawsuits in Connecticut alleging child sexual assault had to be filed within seven years of the abuse and before the alleged victim turned 20. The change, which followed a national trend, was partly in response to tales of victims who repressed memories of molestation until well into adulthood.

The law was first challenged in 1992, but on the limited question of whether it could be applied retroactively to a man accused of abusing his granddaughter decades earlier -- when the laws were different. The state Supreme Court said the law could be applied retroactively.

The decision issued Tuesday goes further, dismissing several challenges to the law and its application. Among them were the grandfather's claim that the 1991 statute should not apply in his case because neither of his grandchildren was claiming an inability to bring the suit sooner because of repressed memories.

The court said that concern for victims with repressed memories was not the sole reason the legislature extended the statute of limitations. The court said there also was concern for children who require therapy or the passage of time to come to terms with the abuse or realize the extent of the emotional harm.